By Billy S. Garland

There is an old idiom that suggests that bad things happen in threes.  U of L seems to have become a good illustration of the potential truth inherent in this statement. Over the past weekend, the university found itself caught in the throws of a surge of criminal activity, as two robberies and a gang style assault took place within three days of each other.
Friday Sept. 11 served as the beginning to the crime spree. The crime alert reported that an unidentified man claiming to have a gun robbed Gray’s Bookstore, located on South Fourth Street, at around 9:35 a.m.  The thief, described as a white male, got away with an undisclosed amount of money, but no one was hurt in the incident.
The crime alert went out at 10:39 a.m. Friday morning.
“He was very quiet about it,” said John Peters, operations manager for Gray’s. “The few customers and employees that were here didn’t even know it was happening.”
 The event is the first and only hold-up style robbery of the bookstore in its 20-year history. The cashier involved in the incident, Cheryl Vice, was unavailable for comment.
University of Louisville police reported that the second incident happened around 11 a.m. Sunday morning. An individual robbed the Cardinal’s Nest convenience store, located in the University Tower Apartments. The crime alert went out 7 hours later, around 6:50 p.m. The cashier, Shanneil Wooten, gave a description of the thief as a 30-year-old black male, around 5’10,” with bad teeth. Supposedly, the man indicated that he had a gun, but, like the Gray’s robbery, he did not brandish it visibly.
“I’m not worried about the money he took,” said the store’s supervisor Janette Micca.
“What worries me is the potential that one of these perpetrators will get nervous and do something stupid, like use the gun.”
Micca went on to explain that the workers of the store don’t often have contact with campus security or the police, until incidents like this happen. Like the event at Gray’s, this was the first robbery of this style that the store has suffered.
“He didn’t touch me or hurt me physically,” said Wooten. “The more and more I think about it, that guy came into the store with two other guys on Saturday and bought juice.”
Wooten went on to explain that she remembered the individual, because he had a distinctive tooth and addressed her as “ma’am.”
“That’s what tipped me off,” said Wooten. “I think he was trying not to startle me, but he called me ma’am, and then I saw what looked like a gun under his hoodie. I know it was him; that tooth stood out to me.”
Only hours later, around 11 p.m. Sunday night, the Department of Public Safety reported that three  black males in their twenties assaulted an undisclosed university student in front of University Tower Apartments. The crime alert went out Monday around 3:35 p.m., approximately 15 hours after the incident.
DPS has released reports of the events via their crime notification e-mails.
“I got the e-mail about the robbing at Gray’s, but I didn’t hear about the other two,” said sophomore Colleen Gough.
DPS is looking into the crimes, but they are not currently investigating the events together. The University is taking measures to increase security on campus.
“The university is taking this very seriously,” said spokesman John Drees. “We will be immediately increasing security patrols. And the housing office has hired additional security officers to patrol the dorms. We will also be working with the Fourth division of the Metro police to investigate the incidents.”
These incidents have prompted a rise in student concern over personal safety.
“We don’t really see DPS around campus that often,” said sophomore Nicolette Short. “I wouldn’t really go out by myself at night.”